You Suck: A Love Story

been used, dumped in the meatish nuggets, and shook them around.
    “Come, kitty.”
    Chet padded a few steps toward the kitchenette, then stopped. Elijah put the bowl down and stepped away. “I understand, kitty. I don’t like to eat in front of witnesses either. But sometimes-”
    The vampire heard a car pull up outside, a car that hadn’t been tuned in a while. He cocked his head and listened as the doors opened and slammed. Four got out. He heard their steps on the concrete, a female voice, hissing at the other three. In an instant he was at the window looking down, and in spite of himself, he smiled again. There was no vivid life aura around the four down on the sidewalk. No healthy pink glow, no black shadow of death. The visitors below were not human.
    Vampires. On one hand, an indication of an enormous problem-one that just might attract attention that he could ill afford-but on the other, exciting in a way that he hadn’t felt in a hundred years.
    “Four against one. Oh my, kitty, how ever will I prevail?”
    The old vampire ran his tongue over his fangs. For all the rage, frustration, and discomfort he’d endured since choosing the redhead as his fledgling, he was, for the first time in de cades, not bored. He was having the time of his very long life.
    “Killing time, kitty,” he said, slipping into a pair of Tommy’s Nikes.
    J ody awoke to the smell of clove cigarettes and the crunching of Cheese Newts. There was music screeching, too-a whiny guy singing about some girl named Ligeia, who apparently he missed a great deal because he was talking about dragging her worm-worn corpse from the earth and caressing her cheek on a cliff above the sea before throwing himself off, with her in his arms. The singer sounded a little down, and like he could have used a throat lozenge.
    She opened her eyes and was initially blinded until she adjusted to the black light, then she yelped. Jared White Wolf was sitting on the bed about two feet away from her, shoving handfuls of crunchy Cheese Newts into his mouth. There was a brown rat on his shoulder.
    “Hi.” Newt crumbs sprayed and fluoresced on the black sheets and clothing.
    “Hi,” Jody said, turning her head to avoid the crumbs.
    “This is my room. Do you like it?”
    Jody looked around, for once not really that thrilled with her vampire night-vision abilities. There were disturbing stains glowing on the sheets, and almost everything else in the room was black with a patina of vibrant blacklight-enhanced dust or lint-there was even lint on the rat.
    “It’s swell,” she said. Interesting, she thought. She was no longer afraid of gang members and street criminals, and would even throw down with an eight-hundred-year-old vampire if need be, but rodents still sort of gave her the willies. The rat’s eyes were glowing silver in the black light.
    “This is Lucifer Two.” Jared scooped the animal off his shoulder and held him out.
    Despite an attempt at self-control, Jody climbed backwards halfway up the wall, shredding a Marilyn Manson poster with her nails in the process.
    “Lucifer One went on to his dark reward when I tried to dye him black.”
    “Sad,” Jody said.
    “Yeah.” Jared turned the rat and rubbed noses with him. “I was hoping we could turn him to nosferatu when you bring Abby and me into the fold.”
    “Yeah, sure, that’ll happen. Why am I in your room, Jared?”
    “It was the only place we could think to bring you. It wasn’t safe under the bridge. Abby had to go, so I’m in charge.”
    “Good for you. Where’s Tommy?”
    “Under the bed.”
    She would have known that-would have heard him breathing if the music wasn’t cranked up to coffin-splitting volume.
    “Could you turn the music down a little, please?”
    “’Kay,” Jared said. He tucked Lucifer Two in his pocket and spidered across the bed, getting a little tangled in his black duster, then rolled to the floor and across the room in a commando-under-fire move until he got to the stereo, where he twisted the dial, putting the keening Emo singer out of his misery, or at least shutting him the fuck up.
    “Where are we?” Tommy’s voice from under the bed. “It smells like gym socks stuffed with ground-up hippies.”
    “We’re in Jared’s room,” Jody said. She let a hand drop off the edge of the bed. Tommy took it and she pulled him out. He was still partially wrapped in duct tape and garbage bags.
    “Was I a hostage again?”
    “We had to cover you up